Weathering, shock metamorphism and type distribution patterns of 98 ordinary chondrites from the Grove Mountains, Antarctica

• Main Authors: Deqiu, Dai, Daode, Wang, Bingkui, Miao
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Polar Research Institute of China - PRIC 2009
• Subjects: Space; Antarctic; Transantarctic Mountains; Grove Mountains; Advances in Polar Science; Antarc*; Antarctica; Polar Science
• Online Access: http://library.arcticportal.org/2386/; http://library.arcticportal.org/2386/1/A0090210.pdf

Petrography and mineral chemistry of ninety-eight ordinary chondrites from Grove Mountains (GRV), Antarctica, were presented and their. Weathering effect, shock metamorphism and type distribution patterns were discussed in this study. Among them, six are unequilibrated ordinary chondrites, including 3H3 and 3 L3; and 92 meteorites are equilibrated ordinary chondrites, including 24H-group (13H4, 10 H5, 1H6), 64 L-group (2 L4, 44 L5, 18 L6) and 4 LL-group (3 LL4, 1 LL5). Most GRV chondrites ( > 90% ) displayed minor weathering effect (W1 and W2). About half of the meteorites experienced severe shock metamorphism. They commonly contain shock-induced melt veins and pockets. These heavily shocked meteorites provide us with natural samples for study of high-pressure polymorphs of minerals. In addition, the Grove Mountains collection seems to have more abundant unequilibrated and L group ordinary chondrites compared to the US Antarctic meteorite collection which were mainly found a long the Transantarctic Mountains.